I'm going certifiably NUTZ!

I've had tomatoes on my plants for more than a month. In fact, I'm having my greatest tomato year in forever! But we've had a particularly cool and gloomy June here in SoCal and I haven't had a single ripe one yet. One (out of probably 100) has been looking like it would break for more than 2 weeks. Every day I check and there seems to be almost *no* change.

I harvested my first tomato today, but I wasn't expecting to. Turns out one of my plants was mislabled, and instead of a big red slicer, one plant is a yellow cherry tomato. It was good, but it was soooo little.

If you are happy with the number of tomatoes, start getting rid of any new growth. pinch the part between the 'v' in the branch and pinch back any flowers that have not produced any tomatos yet. Get them to put all that energy into the toms instead.

good luck, and remember if they don't ripen, take them off with the stem and put them inside either in a paper bag or between sheets of newspaper, they will ripen on your counter.

I never prune tomato plants. It's agony now but we have a hot summer ahead of us and those leaves will be preventing sun scald later. Maybe not an issue in many parts of the country but it is here in SoCal! Plus all of those leaves are little food factories for the plants.

I could also pick a few and start frying green tomatoes. In fact, that sounds like a very good idea. Green or red (actually I've got yellow and black too); better to let them ripen on the vine. There's just no rushing Mother Nature. ;>

That's most years for me. I've got one big slicer that's just now starting to turn, so I figure a week more to go on that, and an Early Girl that will probably be ready in 10 days or so. I'll have the bacon ready because it's going to be BLTs for me for a couple of weeks, I think, once they start coming in. I have had a couple of handfuls of yellow cherry tomatoes to take the edge off my cravings.